CHAPTER XVIII. Silent rushes the swift Lord Apples of Eden ripe to-morrow. - EMERSON. I, the heir of all the ages, in the foremost files of time. -TENNYSON. AUBIN. O FOR a day of ancient Greece ! O to have been quickened for a week at Rome, in Cæsar's lifetime! O that I had had a day with the priests of Egypt and then I should have known what intelligence the Sphinx is meant to look. O to have had an hour with the Druids of Stonehenge, and so to have learned what soul was in their doings there! O for one of the days of the school of the prophets at Ramah ! MARHAM. They are wishes which you would be none the better for having, Oliver; for if they were good, they would not be impossible. AUBIN. I should like to have had a week at the court of Lorenzo de' Medici, and a month at Alexan dria in the second century, and a day or two with the sand-diggers at Rome when they were become Christians, and were making their excavations in the earth, into churches, and tombs, and hidingplaces against persecution. MARHAM. They must have been a very interesting class of men. AUBIN. I should like to have had a day's talk with Abelard. And, O! I should like much to have been a Moor of Granada for a while. Human nature I should like to know in all its varieties. I should like to be an Italian for a week, and a Norwegian, and a Hindoo, and I do not know what else. MARHAM. Nor I either, to any purpose. For such experiences would not be of any use, or else God would have made them possible. So I think, Oliver. AUBIN. My dear uncle, you are quite right. And besides, when we look beyond the clothes, and deeper than the skin, civilized nations are not so very different from one another. Betwixt five nations there are not greater diversities than there often are in the tempers of any five members of an Anglo-Saxon family; only in the household these differences do not seem so great, because all the members of it dress alike and are drilled into like habits. If a man loves the twenty persons nearest him, and so sympathizes truly with their peculiarities, then with the reading of a few books of travels he knows almost as much of human nature as though he had been amongst all nations. MARHAM. It is only with our eyes and through telescopes that the stars are to be known, and it is by much travelling and searching and comparison that the various kinds of flowers and plants are to be known that grow on the Andes and along the Oregon, in the West Indies and in Australia. But it is chiefly out of a loving heart that mankind is to be known. There are good men who have never been out of their native valleys, who are wiser in human nature than thousands are who have traversed the world. AUBIN. Nearly wise, I would say, they are. They have just what is almost wisdom, and what would be wisdom at once, with a very little experience of men. I have known one or two such persons, and in talking with them I was always expecting something wiser than what they said. It was as though they were always just about to become great. I think the state of mind of such persons is what will enlarge in heaven, and brighten very fast. me. to be felt in talking with them. A man of this character I knew once, who was a pauper; and I never saw him without my soul being humbled in For, in presence of his goodness, I myself felt so unworthy! I assisted him a little, and only a little, for I was myself suffering some want at the time. But that he should be accepting relief from me made me feel that there must be a world to come, in which for him and me to be in juster places. And when he thanked me, with humble words, I trembled in myself, because it was as though, all round me, the universe were calling out against me for my enduring to be less of a sufferer than he was who was a better man than myself. MARHAM. He must have been a very extraordinary man, Oliver, I should think. AUBIN. So he was, uncle; and so he is now. He became known to a gentleman, by whom he was befriended and brought forward in the world, and so well, as that he is now a man of station and some public repute. In his profession he is very eminent; and he exemplifies, to some extent, the truth of what we have been saying. MARHAM. I am so persuaded, Oliver, that, though a man can be cunning without a heart, he cannot be wise. It is against the Gospel to suppose he can be. And humble, humble, we must be, if we would know any thing to any spiritual purpose. AUBIN. And especially if we would know human nature; for one way of learning it is out of our own hearts, and they are books that can only be read in humility. MARHAM. Yes, humble we must be, before we can know ourselves, and be willing to see that in our own hearts are the beginnings of what might be like the vices of every nation in the world. AUBIN. There is one soul in all us human creatures. In my mind are the elements of all other men's characters; and my many moods are so many national tempers. In the middle of summer and in the heat of the day, now and then, I am a Brahmin ; and sometimes in the middle of winter, with the wind roaring in the wood, I feel like a Scandinavian. A word or two from some one, some little event or other happening to me, a little bile more or less in my system, the sort of day, |